Strings

I love this highway, I’ve loved it ever since I was a child. That’s not to say I’m familiar with it, because I’m not. Not really. It’s more that I love the memory of it. The one previous time I’d done the whole trip was with my family – back when I had no idea how unusual my life was going to be. If I could be fucked with counselling I’d probably learn that my love for this road was some form of mourning for the steady life I wanted and never got. Because no matter where I was in the years between then and now I’d find in quiet times my mind wondering back to it. I’d spend hours on Google Earth tracing the route and planning when and how I’d get to drive it. And finally, on this very morning, I was here.

I don’t mind sharing that I had over-achieving parents who dragged their underachieving child with them on their career progression. I ended up with an advanced degree I don’t really use. A job I don’t particularly mind. No sense of home, and an accent that isn’t quite Kiwi and isn’t quite American. I also ended up with 90% of my dad’s height (he’s six-and-a-half-feet tall in the American money), and 80% of my mother’s looks (kind of an Ali McGraw doppelganger, for anyone with a working knowledge of obscure actresses from years ago). Oh, and two passports: one issued by the U.S. State Department in Washington and the other by New Zealand’s Department of Internal Affairs in Wellington.

So unlike my State-side circle (I hesitate to call them friends), I did actually have an option to flee Trumpville following the ascension of Big Orange. In the end, it took me a couple of years to get free of my dead-end relationship. In the end, I came home (if I call it home it might feel like home, I guess) because the job I was offered had this highway in the area I’d be covering. I came because my parents had the habit of not selling the houses they’d bought during their progression. So unlike most Kiwis and Americans my age I didn’t have to worry about housing.

So I ended up alone with my job and my parents’ house down by one of the Tauranga harbour’s long arms. I even ended up in my childhood bedroom – although my non-sentimental parents hadn’t kept a single stick of furniture from my childhood – the view from my window out across the water was about it for reminders. Tauranga (a name that confounds nearly every member of my North American circle), is basically a scaled-down Fort Lauderdale. There’s the old – and soon to be infirm. There are contractors that specialise in retirement home construction. There’s those who work in aged care – but who’ll never ever be able to afford to buy a house here. And not much of anyone else.

My days I filled with work. My nights with swiping right for a bit of human contact. Both were disappointing. A lack of responsibility at work, and a lack of any real substance at play.

I was about to throw it all in and retreat back to Trumpville when Covid hit. My parents had warned me about the virus, begged me to come home. But I stayed. In spite of New Zealand’s weak Prime Minister, in spite of the cobbled-together coalition government, and in spite of the poor capacity of the New Zealand health system I stayed for an autumn of essential work. After that came my winter of Alert Levels progressively relaxing while the States became a shit storm of ineptitude. Spring came with rain and wind and muggy heat and a normal life in New Zealand inundated with worrying about my parents. When Pennsylvania declared I e-mailed my boss and took up a week-and-a-half of leave I had owing. I hit the road. My road.

I cope with the shitty morning traffic by reminding myself that I have no deadline, nowhere particular to be. That sooner or later the city will turn to countryside. When the transit sign that simply says EAST comes up I have a moment of joy. A moment I know I’ll treasure – kind of like how I treasure the memory of sitting at the bar at the end of Pier G at SFO, and looking out over the airport’s hard standing is if I’m looking out over the broad Pacific towards a new world and a new day. There’s a scheduled Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt that takes off about half-an-hour before the night flight to New Zealand (or at least there used to be), and to me, Europe always seems like an old world, a yesterday - with that flight’s passengers drifting back in time.

The expressway devolves to a bog-standard highway without me realising I’ve left the city. It’s a jolt when I notice, when I wonder where my mind has been. The transit sign to Pukehina Beach comes up as a stark reminder of my drifting mind. I take the left. My memory of this particular place is as a dot on the map that’s a collection of shoddy beach homes and not much more. Still, two decades will change a place. It’s gentrified and may as well be a suburb - if not for the dozen or so kilometres between the turn-off and Tauranga’s edge. I head down the slip road looking for vehicle access to the beach. There’s none, so I park up and walk out on to the sand. I take my breath of salt air. I feel the wind in my face and the sun’s heat on my skin. Tauranga has all three of those ingredients, but being able to see the open ocean rather than some harbour arm makes it so much more vital. When I look I see beach houses to the left and right – and I’m keen on avoiding people, so I retreat to my Hilux and the highway. there will be other moments of vitality. I’m sure of it.

My whole mantra of planning the days ahead on hunger pangs and where the sun sits in the sky fails each time I check my watch. So when I get to the stretch of highway that parallels the railway, paralleling the coast I decide, as punishment, to take the next left to the next beach and make the most of it. My luck is in though, and there’s vehicle access to the sand. I change down to a low gear and edge my way forward. There are tracks in the sand from other vehicles and the white low-tide beach stretches forever. There’s a handful of vehicles in a cluster, their occupants in deck chairs with surfcasting rods standing like wind wands. I glance at them as I edge slowly by, they show no interest in me – as if the sun had rendered them docile, or me invisible.

I crawl on for another couple of hundred metres as those wind wands grow small in my wing mirror. The wide Pacific is to my left, the low dues that conceal the railway and the quiet highway are to my right. Ahead, there’s a break in the sand that shows itself as the mouth of a stream. I park up about fifty metres short of it, and with the Hilux’s tailgate towards the ocean.

I step out into the heat of a furnace. I glance at my watch, ignore the result, undo it, toss it on to the passenger seat. I unpack my beach stuff: deck chair, towel, sunblock, questionable book. I try sitting in my t-shirt and shorts. I try shuffling my chair into the shade of the tail gate’s high opened door – and even drape a beach towel over its window to shade the sun. It kind of works, but in the end my shorts go, my t-shirt goes, and so too my bra.

I’m not a prude, with two physicians for parents the intricacies of human anatomy filled the dinner table conversations of my childhood – but even with all of that the word topless clangs in my brain. Kind of: hey! I’m topless! I like that I’m doing this for me. And there’s no one to prove anything to. I like not having to prove myself.

I squeeze sunblock into my palms and work at my bare skin. My legs as I lean forward. My arms and hands and face and neck. My midriff as I sit back. I do it methodically. But the truth is I enjoy the self-care. I enjoy the rub of my palms against the swell of my breasts. I take my sweet time with circling my fingertips around my areola. I provoke stiffness from my nipples. I’ve always enjoyed the cause and effect of self-care. I think about dipping a finger or two under the waist of my knickers but don’t. I contemplate the prospect of later as my breathing rests, as my feelings subside.

I read, conscious with each paragraph of the heat on my near-naked body. Conscious of the beads of sweat forming on my skin that demand a flick of a fingertip after every page or two. Beads of sweat on my neck, across my breasts, on my tummy, and my thighs too. In the end, I give up on the rather regrettable novel and close my eyes.

If I wander off into the sand dunes and towards the railway, a freight train might happen along with an engineer who’ll enjoy the view of my tits. I’d wave, but keep my wide-brimmed hat down low so that my face is in shadow. If I take a topless swim the cool waters will play merry games with my skin. I’ll be all goosebumpy. The thought of goosebumps makes me feel goosebumps that aren’t really there. If I push back the Hilux’s front passenger seat as far as it will go I could recline it a bit, take a seat and masturbate remorselessly for as long as I want.

The sound of a vehicle invades my thoughts.

I open an eye and glance in its direction. A lone hatchback makes its way across the sand. It passes behind me, but I reach for an article of clothing – just in case. The car, its driver, they cruise happily on and pull up at the stream mouth. A bloke steps out and glances my way for a second, then opens the hatch. He’s stripping off and is as keen on privacy as me – so I respect that. When I glance up he’s in a wet suit and carrying a mask, snorkel and flippers to the stream mouth. If I move my chair just a bit so that I’m looking towards that stream I could rub the crotch of my knickers while he’s off snorkelling, and he’d not even notice.

A shadow crosses my eyes. It might have been minutes, it could have been hours, I may have been asleep – but I’m awake now, and there’s a young bloke with the top half of his wetsuit off and hanging at his waist. He’s holding a cell phone in a languid hand. I cross my arms and sit up a little straighter. There’s no one else about.

I ask, “What are you doing?”

“I’m...” He’s sort of handsome in that half-baked way of a late teenager. The years ahead could go either way as far as his looks are concerned. I’m concerned by how shallow the thought makes me, especially with being exposed to him. Especially with, well:

“You’re holding a cell phone.”

“Um it’s...”

“It’s what, exactly?”

“Flat. I need...”

He’s all blushes and flusters. He’s got pecs, which I imagine gets him cred in the world of school, but he’s floundering before my eyes. He’s tousel haired, too. Which like all touselled males makes him look a bit gormless. Decidedly so, with the floundering.

“Show me,” I say. He doesn’t move. I demand it, enunciating every syllable. “Show me the screen of your cell phone.”

I reach out and he hands it to me, his eyes diverting from me. I try the power button. It’s as dead as a dead thing.

I ask. “Do you need to call someone?”

“I...”

“You what?”

“My car won’t start. And the tide.”

He’s right, the beach is a fraction of what it was. It startles me. I must have been asleep for how long? I stand and hand him his phone. If I had to guess I’d say he’s eighteen and a recent school leaver. He takes the phone, makes eye contact with me, blushes, drops his glance to my breasts and his eyes widen before darting away. He doesn’t know where to look. I keep my eyes on him, for the enjoyment of his discombobulation.

“Hang on a sec,” I say. I lean into the tailgate, he’ll get a side view as I rummage for my work bag. My ex used to say that I have a nice boob profile. The advantage of a C-cup I suppose. I can see the young bloke in my peripheral, by the looks of things he’ll be needing a moment to himself sooner or later, which I kind of get a kick out of. I stand. “I’m Shasta. What’s your name?”

“Kaylen.”

“Lead the way, Kaylen.”

He does. I think about throwing on a shirt, but why should I? I catch up with him, walk beside him. He’s clearly erect. Not even the top half of his wetsuit hanging down can conceal the obvious.

“Not working today?”

“No, I’m...”

“A school leaver?”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re eighteen?”

“Yeah.”

“When did your exams finish?”

“About a week ago.”

“How old is your car?”

“Um... I’m not...”

“Flat battery?”

“No. I don’t think so. The engine wouldn’t even turn-over.”

When we get to his car I check the registration sticker. Ten years old. So that’s a plus. I open the passenger door and sink to my knees in the sand next to it, place my bag on the passenger seat and lean into the passenger’s footwell.

I ask. “Are the keys in the ignition?”

“Yeah, what are you looking for?”

“There’s...” I’ve found it, and take the car reader from my work bag, uncoil its lead – plug it in. “...a port.” I ask him to turn the key a notch as I hit the power button and let the reader talk to Kaylen’s car. I feel the need to explain that the place I work for sells them. I say, “do you want to start her up?”

He gets behind the wheel and guns the ignition. The car starts normally.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

I understand. “Don’t look a gift horse,” I say. “Let’s get this thing out of the tidal zone.”

I put my bag in the footwell and take a seat next to Kaylen and sit with the reader in my lap. It’s given me a result. We get about halfway back to my Hilux when his car dies again. “It’s the tamper alarm.” I say.

“This isn’t how I thought my day would go,” he says. Part of my brain wants to say you probably didn’t think you’d get to see tits either, though, right? But I don’t. “Is there anyone you can call?”

“I’ve been staying with Past--,” he says. “But my phone.” Oh yeah, his phone.

“And where were you heading?”

“Home.”

“And home is...?”

“Napier.”

“So you’ve got two problems then?” Like lightning, the look of response on his face tells me that he thinks I think his second problem is his erection, rather than phone + car = two problems. Instead of explaining myself, I say “You might need a moment to yourself.” I smile as I say it, and nod towards his crotch. The look on his face is priceless in its excruciation.

I explain the tamper alarm to Kaylen and he takes his key and follows me back to my Hilux. He makes a call on my phone. It doesn’t go well. There’s trouble with the technicalities and his father is tied up with a busy Tuesday afternoon at work. I motion for the phone and hit speaker, place the phone on the tailgate, negotiate a plan with Kaylen’s father, who seems a prick about a girl knowing about cars (if only he knew the truth of it: there’s this port, you plug it in, and a computer tells you). So I lie and say my husband figured it out, and he’s packing up his fishing gear so can’t talk right now (because he doesn’t exist). My lie helps to ease the way ahead.

As we talk I stand and lean towards Kaylen. I grab my bottle of after sun and apply it to my more sun-sensitive bits. As I flick make-believe sand off one of my nipples, which stands at my efforts, the plan evolves into getting Kaylen’s car to Pastor Mike’s house – so Christ, Kaylen’s a God botherer. And here I am tits out. Oh well, Garden of Eden and all that.

“I could just chance it,” says Kaylen.

“She’s right,” says the father.

“Shasta,” I say. “My name is Shasta.”

“Shasta’s right,” says father, steeling my points. “You might make it for five-hundred kilometres, or five-hundred metres. And your car could fail in the middle of nowhere.”

We end the call and I finish the after sun by attending to the undersides of my breasts.

“So where’s this Pastor live?” I ask.

“Te Puke.”

“I’ll follow you,” I say. “Just in case.” Hayden looks at me as if I’ve somehow forgotten my state of undress. I reach for my bra and lean forward as I put my arms through the loops and shrug the straps onto my shoulders, then reach around to clasp it up. “There. I’m respectable again.” I’m wearing a sports bra combo I got from REI the last time I was in San Francisco. So I’m not exactly in lingerie. “Fine,” I say, feigning resignation. “I’ll put a shirt on.”

I hand Kaylen his key and tell him to start it up and not look back. I pack my own stuff and by the time I’m done his car is part-way to the vehicle access point. So his car and the chip in his key have spent enough time apart that the tamper alarm seems happy to let peace reign, which is one problem solved - for now. I follow him down the beach and off it to the highway where we hang a right and re-trace my steps. I feel my own version of Kaylen’s unplanned day. I’d not expected to be retracing my steps. I’d not planned on exposing myself to a horny and touselled eighteen-year-old.

It’s not far to Te Puke, and the Church is more or less on the main street. The hatchback disappears down the entrance to a car park ’round back. I follow and pull up beside Kaylen, but contra-direction so that my window is next to his. I lower mine as he lowers his. I show off by killing the engine in full confidence that I’ll be able to start it again.

I ask, “What now?”

“I wait until I get picked up.”

“How long?”

“A few hours,” after checking his watch.

“How are you going to get to Napier?”

“Bus, I suppose, tomorrow.”

“That’ll take all of tomorrow.”

I keep at my interrogation. The upshot is that some of the local parishioners (if that’s the right word) are heading down to Napier on Friday for a church thing, and well before then the spare key from his home would have arrived in the post. A spare key with a hopefully functioning chip in it. Following which, some kind soul will drive the car to Napier.

“Are you in a hurry?” I ask. “Is there something urgent for you to get home for?”

“Not until Friday evening,” he says.

“Couldn’t you stay until Friday with Pastor...?”

“No,” he says. “I’d rather--”

“You could come with me,” I say, cutting him off. Kaylen doesn’t look convinced. I’m not either. But here I go, “I’m going around the coast, you could teach me to snorkel as a quid-pro-quo.” I sweeten the deal by saying that I’ll keep my top on if that helps him decide. And with a smirk “or take it off.”

He laughs, it’s a nervous laugh. But still a laugh. And he’s got a cute smile.

“I’ve got a lot of stuff in my car,” he says.

“I’ve got a Hilux,” I say. “I’ll give you a hand with your stuff.”